


To Know This Was Coming

by elmarienz



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Anyways, M/M, but i kinda lost my inspiration, esther wants to be accepting, implied past sexual content, she just isn't ready yet, so here you go, this was supposed to be part of a longer piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-10 22:26:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11701119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elmarienz/pseuds/elmarienz
Summary: She'd known, of course. Those kind of things, those kind ofsigns, they were hard to miss.





	To Know This Was Coming

**Author's Note:**

> so this is what happens when i, for some unexplainable reason, listen to 'warning' from 'bare: a pop opera' on repeat for like thirty minutes.

_where was the warning? how could this be?_

Esther didn't often wake up before dawn on Saturdays. There was no school to prepare her sons for, no job at the factory waiting for her and Sarah. Nothing that necessitated a rise from bed before the earliest glow of the sun emerged from the dark city. But a gunshot and the subsequent yelling of a police officer- close enough to hear, far enough away to not be a cause for any real concern- had woken her, and sleep refused to take hold a second time. Laying there in bed seemed to Esther's practical nature to be a waste of wakefulness, a waste of the time that she had been given, and so she pushed the thin blankets aside, careful not to disturb her sleeping husband, and made her way downstairs.

Halfway down the steps, Esther heard a voice, and froze. Jack. What was he doing in the apartment, at this hour?

"...yeah, right."

"I'm serious, Jack," a different, quietly exasperated voice replied. David. "You didn't need to walk me home, I'm perfectly capable-"

"I ain't lettin' you walk that far alone at night, Dave."

For a moment, there was silence. And then:

"You need to get back. We're making too much noise just talking, and I don't want to wake my folks."

"You didn't seem to care much 'bout noise earlier."

"Jack, my fa-" David's voice was replaced by a low moan.

Esther flinched. That was not a sound she ever expected to hear from her son, not a sound that she ever wanted to hear.

"You was saying?" Jack laughed softly.

Esther snuck back upstairs, carefully avoiding the steps with a reputation for creaking at inopportune moments. She crawled into bed, lying with her eyes fixated on the dark ceiling. Mayer was still asleep. She heard the sliding of the window, the sound of Jack crawling out. The soft creak of David's foot choosing the wrong stair.

She'd known, of course. Those kind of things, those kind of _signs_ , they were hard to miss. The constant brushing of shoulders and fingertips, the glances held a moment too long, the smiles and furtive whispers. The afternoons after school, when David would announce that he was going to the theatre, and not return home in time for dinner. But that didn't mean that she was prepared for it, for the cold, hard evidence that couldn't be denied.

She loved David. Always had. Always would. But she wasn't ready for this, not yet. Not to face that this _closeness_ that her son had with Jack would inevitably complicate his life. Not to face yet another example of how her David, once a little boy in a makeshift bed fashioned from a dresser drawer, was nearly grown. Someday, she would be, sooner rather than later, she hoped. But not yet.

And if at breakfast Esther noticed the purple marks on David's neck that the collar of his fully-buttoned shirt didn't quite cover, she pretended she didn't.

_i guess there are some things we don't want to see._

**Author's Note:**

> so. that's that. on a different note, i've been messing around with the idea of a modern au involving speech and debate (because davey is a debate kid fight me), so hopefully i'll get that written and posted on here before too long!


End file.
